Radeon 9800 XT Garbled Screen

I got a 9800 XT to replace a bad 9800 PRO that I had, the die chipped on the corner, so I now have a OEM 9800 XT with the stock copper cooler on it. The temps hang at around 66C at idle, and around 71C at full load. This seems quite high to me, basing this off of other ATI cards I have owned. I don't know if this is related to my problem, but it could.

Twice now my screen has garbled on me, like a one pixel high line across the screen, with a ranbow of colors, all the way up and down the screen, so nothing can be seen at all. I reboot, and it was fine. Second time happened a few hours later, after I was done gaming playing AAO (1 hour after). I got up and walked out the door for a minute, came back inside, and found the Windows XP screensaver on, but locked up, showing 3 of the windows XP logos, and a few lines that were white, with a little color variation, running straight across but not all the way, kinda randomly placed. Rebooted again, and the system was fine, no probs at all gaming as of yet. I've been checking the temp of the card often, hangs around 67C most of the time at idle, and a few degrees higher at load. This is stumping me right now, because I don't know if 66C is safe for this card at idle, or if there is a problem with the driver or something, its a brand new never used card. Here are my specs and conditions at the time of error.

My x800pro tops out a 66C under full load, the load temp of 71C doesn't seem right as mine idles in the low 40s, there's no way it only goes up 5C. You've given the ambient temp as 72-80F, this seems too low as mine are within a few degrees C of each other at idle (at the moment ambient is 41C, GPU 44C). What do you mean by last checked temp for both instances=67,68C? Is this the GPU and the ambient temp? I'm using Everest to check mine, as it seems to be fairly reliable.

Check to see if the Overdrive feature is on, for some reason I had it on just last night and it did the same thing to my 9600XT. I shut of the Overdrive and all has been well. This happened when I was loading up Quake 4, and sent a cold chill down my spine....I really can't afford a new card at this moment! It may also be overclocked a bit too high which can render the same results. I hope I gave you something different to look at. Cheers!

Check to see if the Overdrive feature is on, for some reason I had it on just last night and it did the same thing to my 9600XT. I shut of the Overdrive and all has been well. This happened when I was loading up Quake 4, and sent a cold chill down my spine....I really can't afford a new card at this moment! It may also be overclocked a bit too high which can render the same results. I hope I gave you something different to look at. Cheers!

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all overdrive is ATI sanctioned, which means its guaranteed to work, and it automatically downclocks according to temps as well, its only a matter of 7MHz for me, and im sure the RV360 isnt too much different, considering its the same core, only a bit faster and half as powerful pipeline wise.

Even though the errors occured at reasonable temps, if the card is running too high under load it can damage it fairly quickly. You need to check the in game temp, as temps can drop fairly quickly once you exit a game. Download Ati Tay Tools , it has an OSD so you can check the GPU and ambient temps in game, you need to reboot for it to take effect.